


Making Contact

by chezchuckles



Series: Army Castle [9]
Category: Castle (TV 2009)
Genre: Army Spy, F/M, spy castle - Freeform, this might actually go before Folie, we couldn't decide on the order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28486728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chezchuckles/pseuds/chezchuckles
Summary: Castle returns for a fun weekend but is blocked by a team sitting on Beckett's place.
Relationships: Kate Beckett & Richard Castle, Kate Beckett/Richard Castle
Series: Army Castle [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1945063
Comments: 37
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

She woke to his hand over her mouth and his eyes feral in the darkness.

Beckett went still, immediately aware, and blinked slowly as she stared up at him.

He was scanning her bedroom with paranoia-laced eyes, shot through with a fear she’d never seen before, but when she relaxed and went loose, his gaze came down to her.

He lifted his hand.

She didn’t speak, didn’t ask. She hadn’t seen him in twenty-nine days, but she’d gotten an email midway through, a strange email, too honest for even him, where he’d said he loved her, he wanted her to wait for him, please don’t open your door to anyone but me.

She’d taken it for his brand of melodramatic romance, but now she was beginning to think he’d meant it literally.

Castle bent close and touched his mouth to her cheek bone, breathed her name. “Clothes. Gun. Come with me.”

She rose swiftly, moved in a crouch at his gesture, heading for her bureau. She eased open the bottom drawer and found a pair of dark wash jeans, began slithering into them. She glanced behind her and saw Castle pressed against the wall, staring out into the night.

She checked the bedside clock. A little before three in the morning. She had Monday and Tuesday off, comp days for overtime she had worked on a Vice case, so whatever was going on with Castle, she had a long weekend to deal.

She had used up her vacation days on him already.

He snapped his fingers at her and she flipped him off, but she went a little faster, pulling a t-shirt from the top of the stack and yanking it over her head. The silk nightie was warm against her skin beneath that, but she didn’t have time - or the inclination - to take it off first.

Freezing in here. She was trying to cut back on her utility bill after last month, but it was fucking twenty degrees outside. Her fingers ached in the cold.

She stood slowly, gathered her weapon from the box on her dresser, inserted the clip and checked the round. She tugged on her harness and snapped it, sheathed her gun in its snug holster. 

Castle tossed a sweatshirt at her face and she scowled at him, but she pulled it on over her head, a dark navy with a small NYPD crest above the breast. Relatively nondescript considering all of her others were labeled Army or Police in big bold proud letters.

He gave her what she assumed could only be the field sign for get a fucking move on it Beckett and she checked her weapon under the sweatshirt, making sure she still had clearance to draw, before she found her coat thrown over the chair.

Thursday night drinks with a couple of Vice guys and the coroner friend she’d made - and then alienated for Castle, to get him medical care after nearly having his hand chopped off. She thought the doc was coming around again; Parish had stopped giving her dead-to-me dismissals.

Maybe it was the rumors going around that she was heading upstairs. Nothing like obvious ambition and a perceived cloud of success around a girl to make people thaw out a little.

Or to paint a target on your back.

Beckett had felt the target lately.

Castle snapped his fingers at her again and she wanted to fucking break them, but she settled for kicking at his knee and managing to make his leg dip. He shot her a snarl of a grin over his shoulder and led the way out of her bedroom.

After Deleware’s performance in that alley last year, she was a lot more willing to do as he asked. But it didn’t mean she went quietly.

Well, she was technically going quietly now, but not-

Fuck.

Fuck it. She was held in his fucking thrall, she would follow him to the ends of the earth, what the fuck kind of good did it do for her to pretend she didn’t want him so badly her teeth were on edge and her body thrummed at just the thought of him?

So yeah, she was going to follow. 

Castle paused at her front door and glanced back, caught sight of her scowling face. He turned abruptly and caught the sides of her coat, yanked her into him. She huffed but lost her breath as he roughly kissed her hello.

She angled her tongue against his and made it dirty, as enticing as possible, and he growled softly in his throat and knuckled between her legs.

She moaned and came up on her toes, and he pulled off her mouth, stilled his hand at the crotch of her jeans. His eyes were no less feral than when he’d pulled her from dreams.

He darted in and bit her earlobe, suckled, popped off. “A team is watching your place,” he husked. His mouth at her mouth for another lewd, desperate kiss. “I’ve spent two days trying to get around them. First chance I’ve had to make contact. Come with me?”

That it was a question, that there was a fucking interrogative on the end of that explanation at all made her want to weep.

Don’t you know?

But she merely bucked her hips against the heaviness of his erection and tongued that spot just in front of his ear that made him ever harder. “Of course,” she whispered. “I want to make a little contact of my own.”

\-----

He had a fist in her coat, but it wasn’t like she had to be dragged. He just couldn’t keep his damn hands off. She had her own hand on the butt of her weapon - he was making her a little edgy with this cloak and dagger shit - but as they moved doggedly up the stairs to the roof, she managed to shake off that middle-of-the-night terror.

“What the fuck is going on, Castle?” she hissed.

“How am I supposed to know? You’re the one with teams sitting on your place.”

“Have they been following me?”

“Yes.” He shot her a glance and his mouth was grim. He was scared for her. It tumbled through her guts and she gripped the railing of the stairs, hauling herself up. 

She had teams following her.

“It could be my father,” he got out. His breath whistled in his lungs and he shook his head. “I’ve managed to keep him the fuck away from you, but my threats might have run out.”

She shivered. They rounded the landing and came up the last flight. “But if it’s just your father’s teams out there then... why are we running?”

“Because I don’t know,” he growled. “I don’t know.”

His father. As much as she hated running from that man, she had to admit that running felt safer than staying and seeing what he had in mind for her.

Fuck, she hated running. “I’m not going to let him-”

“It might not be him, Beckett.” Castle stopped before the door that led to roof access. “And if it’s not - I don’t want to sit around and find out.”

She grit her teeth and reached past him for the door, yanked it open ahead of him. He huffed at her for it, but she moved out onto the roof, elbowing him aside.

“Fucking hell, at least keep a low profile, Beckett.” 

She dropped into a hunch as soon as he spoke, crept forward to the maintenance structure that house the HVAC. Castle moved at her back, his hand resting low, practically at her ass, and he nudged her towards the north side. Her boots scrape the rooftop, tar paper and grit, and the whole city was spread out before them here at the edge.

“Where are they?” she asked softly. She realized she had taken his hand, that they were holding hands now on the top of the roof. Why the fuck had she done that?

“There,” he murmured. “Five o’clock. Parked in the dark panel van.”

“The plumbing company?”

“Mm.”

She narrowed her eyes and scanned the area, the dark buildings - a hardware store, an ethnic corner grocer, another apartment, and an abandoned building that had gone empty six months ago.

Castle might not know about that one. “The office park is gone,” she said softly. “It was zoned commercial but they lost their lease. There’s an appeal at the city to make it residential. But it’s empty right now.”

“Oh,” he murmured. “Shit. It’s not vacant.”

“No, I’m telling you it is-”

“I’m telling you it’s not,” he hissed. “I’ve seen people going in and out for the last three days. That’s the base of operations. Which means they have a window-”

“Right on my apartment,” she finished. “Fuck. This is serious.”

He looked grim as he surveyed the area. “This is definitely serious. And I don’t have enough information.”

“Why the fuck are we running then?” she hissed. “I have my weapon. I’m assuming you have yours. And we have the element of surprise here.”

His jaw worked. “We... do.”

“Then let’s go after them. At least we’ll learn something.”

His shoulders came up; she could see it appealed to him. He was a man of action, not wait-and-see. 

But he shook his head. “We wouldn’t learn shit,” he muttered. “We’d know their covers, and we’d find out how well equipped they are, but we wouldn’t learn a damn thing about who sent them. And then we’d have bodies we’d have to deal with.”

She growled, not happy with his pronouncement, but she hadn’t intended on there being bodies. “I’m a cop, Castle. We don’t leave bodies. I’d call it in.”

“No. No calling it in.”

She crossed her arms and turned into him, putting her hip against the roof’s edge. “Then what the hell are we doing?”

“Running,” he said. “I’m taking you to a safe house.”

“Your Harlem-”

“Not exactly,” he muttered. “Now come on, Beckett. Over the roof.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “How do you propose to-”

Castle reached past her and snagged a black rope that had been coiled just under the lip of the concrete edge. “It’s how I got up.” 

“You fucking climbed up all six floors?”

He shrugged. “Going down is a lot fucking easier.” He was unwinding the rope even as he spoke, and now she saw the harness dangling at the other end, the carabiners attached. “All we have to do is rappel. I’ll tie the rope off at the bottom, but even if these assholes find it, we’re long gone.”

Holy shit. They were really doing this.

\-----

They rappelled down the side together, Castle in the harness and Beckett lashed to his chest. She was nestled in his lap, and he was doing all the damn work, so that she merely planted her feet inside his and pushed off at his huff of three in her ear.

Once on the ground outside her apartment building, the sidewalk seemed too vulnerable and open. The van was parked at the front entrance, and Castle had pointed out a secondary team at the alley that housed the dumpsters. So even though they were on the side of the building, and not the side with the fire escapes, it was so naked here that it didn’t seem right.

Castle was undoing the knots that kept them tied together, jerking on the rope so that she stumbled into him. Their bodies were so close that she could feel the tension that coiled in his muscles and made him frustrated.

“Two days, watching me?” she murmured.

“Watching them,” he muttered, his fingers working at the rope.

“Watching them watch me.”

“Saw your MMA fight.” His head came up, the rope falling away from her hips. “You wiped the floor with that bitch.”

“She was ranked,” Kate said, heat blooming in her guts.

“She was? Are you now?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s my girl.” His kiss was rough, his tongue swiping at her teeth and out again. He had a hand in the waistband of her jeans, tugging hard. “Anything broken I should know about?”

“Just bruises.” She bit his chin and caught his hand, unwound him from her pants. “You bruise me often enough that it doesn’t matter.” She worked at the harness he was still strapped into, lifting her head to look at him.

“I bruise you good,” he grinned. But his eyes were sober, entirely too serious for the light-hearted way he said it. 

He was afraid. 

She was so fucking done with being afraid. His father couldn’t do this to her. She wasn’t doing anything wrong; she barely made a dent in Castle’s spy work, let alone kept him from it. He didn’t even call her anymore because she had shut that down after-

“You know what?” she said. “I’m not fucking running.”

She threw down the harness and stomped off, heading for the front of her building and that damn panel van that had been parked out here for the last two days.

Enough of this.

\-----


	2. Chapter 2

“Beckett!” he snapped. She could hear him chasing after her, and she sped up, but she didn’t want to run. She wasn’t going to run from him either.

He snagged her by the back of her coat and yanked her into him. 

“Don’t fucking hold me back,” she snarled, shoving her elbow into his guts. “I’m not letting this one go. I am done with having him breathe down my back. I don’t even do anything to you. You do what you fucking want and I don’t have any fucking say in it. So don’t you dare ask me to run.”

Something flashed over his face, like his feelings had been hurt, but she shrugged him off and stalked around the corner. She drew her weapon even as she heard Castle curse but come up at her back. The van came to life, a movement in the front seat, but she sprinted the last few yards and came up at the driver’s door.

A man brought up his weapon, but she slammed the butt of her gun into the window and it shattered around the metal - and her fist. She held the gun on him, used her free hand to scrabble at the door lock. She yanked on the door handle and kept the hulking man in her sights.

“NYPD. Hands on the wheel,” she snapped.

Castle cursed a blue streak but he’d come up at the passenger side and had opened up the door. The man in the front was covered in tattoos, and studs littered his ear, his lip, and his nose. He was - strangely - familiar.

“Open up in back,” Castle said calmly. “Right now. Open it.”

The tattoo driver gave a growling crunch of his jaw, but the back door did slide open. Since Beckett was on this side of the van, she couldn’t see in, but she saw Castle’s face.

He narrowed his eyes. “You fucking idiots. Get the fuck out.” He turned to look at her and jerked his chin, gave her another field signal that she took to mean deal with him.

She raised her bloodied fist and slammed her gun into the back of the driver’s skull. He gave a grunt and slumped forward, rocked to one side unconscious. She slammed shut the driver’s door and came around to Castle’s side.

Russian mob. Holy fuck. The tattoos on these guys were clear indicators of their affiliation, and she felt the hair crawl on the back of her neck.

How had she not noticed these assholes? Two days being followed, even at the MMA fight, and she had never picked up on it? Castle had been training her and she could’ve fucking sworn she was better than this.

Castle had them lined up on the sidewalk, and she covered them with her weapon. Three guys, two of them skinny techs with fresh tatts, like they were newbies. The equipment inside was digital, so there were no tapes to destroy. It had probably all been uploaded already to some server.

“I have to call this in,” she told him.

His jaw worked. “Yeah. Damn it. You do.”

\-----

Beckett chafed, her coat pulled off and the sweatshirt hiked up around her exposed holster. The blue lights washed the scene in grim static, and she was cut out of the center, alone before her apartment building.

Castle was playing the dumb enlisted man to the hilt, the hick with sniper training who’d had his girlfriend’s back. He’d made it seem like it had all been her cunning and skill, and his resources (the harness and rope), and now her Vice squad detectives were clustered in a knot and discussing her.

She crossed her arms and glared at the fuckers in the back of the police van, all four of them with their tattoos and piercings and thug-life mafia personas. She was fucking pissed but more because she didn’t deserve this collar. Castle was the one who’d found these guys, who’d seen them for two days following her.

“Seems I’m in the clear,” came his voice. She turned and he approached, carefully not touching her. “You gotta go in?”

She worked her jaw. “They’ve kicked me out of this one. Said I’m too close.”

“Shit.” Castle rubbed his jaw. “They definitely look down on me, but I didn’t get the feeling they looked down on you.”

“They fucking hate me.”

He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes, but she shrugged. Just life. Castle still didn’t touch her - he knew her rules about being on duty - but he did mirror her pose, crossing his arms and scowling. “They hate you for what?”

“Being a girl,” she muttered. “Being - youngest to make detective. Being ambitious as fuck. I want upstairs and they know I’m just putting in my time.”

“You’re bigger than them,” he said. “Better than them. You have fucking plans, baby. They don’t know you. They don’t have any fucking say in what you are.”

She kinda hated that his words meant so damn much, but they did. Straightened her spine, set her jaw. “Well.” She glanced at him; he wasn’t looking at her but scowling at the detectives clustered around their sergeant. 

Her heart flipped.

“Alright,” Castle muttered. “What’s next? Cause I have an idea if you’re up for it.”

She eyed the guys from Vice and their fucking boys’ club. “You called Eastman,” she intuited. “What did he say?”

Castle chuckled. “I did. Yeah. He said he thinks he knows why.”

She swiveled her head to him, sharply scanning his features. “Why.”

“Remember Brighton Beach?” His face was that covert-action blank. If any of those idiots from Vice who’d been questioning him saw him right in this moment, they couldn’t possibly mistake the hardness in his eyes or the intelligence. 

All those parts of him she’d seen at Brighton Beach, parts of him she’d never quite seen before - but maybe for a few times in bed when he wrested control from her, and her orgasm.

“Oh fuck,” she whispered. “The diamonds.”

He nodded briefly. “You want to come in with me and get started on this, or you want to hope the fuckers in Vice magically open their fucking eyes and see what a damn impressive detective you are?”

She laughed. She was pissed at them both for making her laugh, but it came out anyway. She smacked his shoulder and he grinned, caught her wrist as if that had been permission to touch.

“Guess I don’t have much choice, do I?”

He shook his head. 

“Alright. They release me, we go.”

Castle looked fucking pleased as punch, and at least it fit nicely into his cover.

\-----

He had come home to her only to find he couldn’t go home.

It had really fucking pissed him off. Close but so far. He had circled and circled like a damn dog, and he’d sniffed at the fuckers but he hadn’t wanted to get close just in case they knew him. 

But it had turned out the fuckers knew them both.

Russian mafia from Brighton Beach and while he didn’t play the blame game - no fucking way, not with Beckett - he knew it was his own damn fault. He’d put them in this position by taking out their competition rather than letting it ride.

He hadn’t wanted to see her touched. No one touched her but him. And he’d overreacted and shown his hand and she’d been - he had never seen her off her game before, but he had that night.

“Car,” he said, nudging her across the street to his ride. 

“You have a car?” she blurted out.

He gave a half shrug. “No. But. Car.”

She huffed at him but reached for the passenger door; he unlocked the doors and they both got in. Dodge Challenger, 2005, fresh off the lot for the CIA Office. Two-door, matte black, so he’d had no trouble following her fuckers for two days; they hadn’t once spotted him. 

“This is a fucking nice car,” she muttered. “The CIA?”

He felt his lips twisting into a smile, pleased to have impressed her. “Yeah. Stole it from the local office.” He let himself grin wider as the engine purred, pleased with that too, and Beckett snapped her seat belt into place.

And then she leaned into the center console and dropped her hand on top of his forearm, caressed the rope of muscle as he flexed through the gears.

His cock stirred. She wasn’t looking at him, but her fingers were making designs along his skin, scratching lightly before going back to that soft as sin seduction. He was stalling out the fucking car with the way she touched him.

This was all he’d wanted since he’d gotten back to New York, and now she seemed to be right there with him, wanting it too. 

“Pull out, Richard.”

He swallowed hard and put the car into gear, checked his mirrors. The blue lights still swirled across the concrete and brick edifices, but half of the police cars had left, including the ambulance. 

“Come on, baby. Pull out.”

He let out a breath and turned to look at her, wishing - so much. That this had gone differently, that he’d picked her locks two days ago and sneaked inside her bedroom to wake her the best way. Fight for his spot in her bed once more. 

“You know I don’t like pulling out,” he said, gave her a wink. “But I’ll do it for you.”

She grunted and pinched his wrist. “Don’t be a fucking sap, Richard. Do your job, so we can get this settled.”

\-----

As he drove, that last little thing that was niggling at him finally swam to the surface - but Beckett was the one who brought it up first.

“Cujo’s with my dad.”

“Oh, fuck. That’s what was missing.”

She slapped the back of her hand against his chest and it stung for sure, but she dropped her hand on top of his again where he shifted the gearstick. He was betting she liked the thrum of the engine up through their arms.

“How’s - uh - he doing?”

“Fine. I took him to the vet last week for a cyst though. They put him under and he did not fucking like that.”

Castle barked a laugh, tried to smother it. “I meant your dad. But fuck - Cujo. Poor beast. Anesthesia is the fucking worst.”

“You certainly don’t do well with it,” she said. Her fingers were caressing again. Fuck was that distracting. “But Cujo, no. He walked around crooked, trying to shake it off. I had to bring him into the bed with me because it scared the shit out of him.”

He wasn’t laughing now. The damn dog had been something of a savior for him, and not just because of Ireland. But because of how it had insinuated him back inside her place. And to hear now that she had pulled the dog into bed with her just to comfort it...

“And your dad?” he said. He had to change the subject before she realized what she’d confessed to him. “He took Cujo for how long?”

“He’s on a duck hunt with the guys.”

“That’s good. Getting out there-”

“No, it’s fucking terrible. Those guys are part of the problem. They all work together at the firm, and they go out drinking with my dad, make him part of their fucking-” She bit off her words and her fingers squeezed around his loose hand on the gearshaft. “They hunt for like maybe two hours. And then they’re back in the damn lodge drinking away the rest of the afternoon.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, so I figured, fuck it. Let him take the dog like he’s a fucking duck hunter too. Maybe when one of those assholes shoots Cujo because they don’t know any fucking better, it’ll open his eyes.”

His heart clutched. She looked miserable. “Naw, baby. Cujo’s too smart to let that happen.”

She gave a choked laugh and glanced at him. “Yeah, true. He’s a good dog.”

“He is. And he learns damn fast. Knows every single command now, doesn’t he?”

“I have precision control over him.” She gave a haughty, prideful look his way, and his heart swelled at that. How amazing she was, how she fought every damn day. “He comes within millimeters of the kill bite. We’ve been practicing.”

“Good job, baby.” He flipped his hand around and squeezed her, fiercely. “No, I’m serious. Good job. That shit takes time. And I don’t know how you’ve managed it.”

“Well, you know, when a certain covert agent is gone, turns out I have a lot of downtime.”

He laughed, but that actually - that kind of stung. Not that she’d hurt his feelings, but imagining her here without him, without - any of this back and forth and companionship and just... He loved her. He was so fucking in love with her. And knowing that she had all this time on her hands, he worried.

He worried. What she was doing with all of that intensity and focus and stubbornness. What she was doing here alone, throwing herself into every damn case that came through the Twelfth because she had things to prove.

Fuck, when he thought about it, he was more than worried. He was fucking afraid. The Russians on her for two days - that he knew about - and her father as unreliable as ever, and having to take the damn dog into the vet, and fuck.

Fuck.

She wouldn’t let him call home anymore, but he was fucking doing away with that damn rule. Never mind that it made her nervous about what his father would do, never mind that it split his focus on the job, he was fucking calling her.

He needed her.

She needed him.

“Almost there?” she said. “Or what.”

“Almost there,” he promised. And they were - they were. He could feel her closer to him than ever. If not more willing, then definitely more entwined with him.

\-----

"What is this place?" she muttered, wrinkling her nose at the condition of the back entry.

"Base of operations. Makeshift, anyway," he answered, rattling the key in the lock. The iron collapsible gate finally released its hold on the lock and he could pushed it back. The elevator was wide enough for a piano or two, and it was all warped metal and strange bolts. 

Beckett stepped on after him and moved to the back, leaning against the wall as she watched him force the gate closed once more. He stepped to the side and punched the three, and then the elevator began its churning lurch upwards.

"Slow elevator," she said, lips smirking.

"Easier to defend if your enemy is stuck on a creaking monster."

She laughed, her mouth wide and happier than he'd seen her in a while. He reached out and took her by the elbow, dragged his touch down to her hand to entwine their fingers. "Two days, Kate. Nearly killed me. So close but so far."

She let out a shaky breath but her amusement was still high, her eyes searching his before dropping to his lips. "How slow is this slow-ass elevator?"

"Not slow enough for all the things I want to do to you," he husked. He had to swallow to clear his throat, and he shook his head, closing her in an embrace. "And Eastman is up there waiting on us."

"Damn," she whispered.

"Don't I know it." He nudged his nose into her, his breath too fast and stirring her hair. He wanted to kiss her but he was afraid he'd lose all control if he tasted her. Middle of the night kiss always tasted like sex, dark and rich, and the wanting her was just intense. 

"I can feel you," she murmured. Her hips rocked into his and he let out a grunt, gripping her ass with both hands to keep her still - or maybe drive her just as crazy. "But don't worry, baby, I'm hard for you right now too."

"Good," he husked. His heart was pounding. "Promise we'll get to it."

"You asking or making?"

"Both?" He wanted her promise for the whole rest of his life, but his was far easier to make. "Since you like it when I take command of you, let's just call it a threat."

She hummed, her laughter buried in her chest, and he really loved that sound, really loved-

"You guys know the elevator has been stopped for a while?"

He sighed and pulled his head back from Kate, turned to look at his CIA handler, contact, and all-around life saver. "Eastman. You always were a cockblock."

Kate laughed, pushing him away in such a delicate maneuver that her hand rubbed firmly against his groin and then so did her ass as she turned. "Eastman, good to see you again."

Eastman tipped his nonexistent cap. "Detective. Honored. How's Cujo feeling?"

"He's fine, just fine." She was already shoving aside the mesh gate with Eastman's help. "You been watching me too?"

"Only a little," Eastman grinned. "Since you're so close to so many state secrets." And as Castle came out of the elevator, Eastman gave him a quick once-over, no doubt entirely aware of the state of Castle's affairs. "And national treasures, as well."

Kate laughed, and her eyes flashed back to his as he wrestled to close the mesh gate once more and lock it. She slid up at his side and leaned in, kissed the corner of his mouth. "Mm, national treasure for sure."

Her grin was infectious, her face bright, and he made a solemn vow then and there to funnel money into her account for that damn dog's vet bills. At the very least. She deserved the whole fucking world, this amazing woman, and all he could offer seemed to be dilapidated warehouses and running for her life.

\-----


	3. Chapter 3

Beckett realized she was holding herself stiffly because of the bruises from the AMA fight, but it really was the first time she was feeling it. Something about having a safe place to land, all she could figure. Now that Castle was back, and being his bullying self, she had that sense of having direction again, a focus that her mania always seemed to lack.

She hated that he did that for her where she failed, but fuck. At least he wasn't getting in the way. At least he wasn't trying to dictate her job like he tried to dictate every damn thing else. He never even had suggestions; he always deferred to her. 

In fact, ordering him around, his constant back-up when he was stateside - those things had fed her authority on the job. As if he were a phantom presence in her head, automatically straightening her spine.

And fuck, her bruised ribs must be messing with her head, because in no way would she ever usually admit that. Let alone, sit here at the metal work conference table while Eastman and Castle hashed out contingency plans for her weekend - without her.

She roused to assert herself. "Wait. Before we jump the gun. How do we know it's about the diamonds?"

Eastman paused, did her the courtesy - the respect really - of answering her and not looking first to Castle for permission. She really liked Eastman. He even smiled as he spoke. "I checked the supply vault the second Castle told me they were Russians. Diamonds were gone. I did some digging and found they'd been used in a Colombian buy-out op-"

"Fuck, are you kidding me?" Castle groaned and scrubbed a hand down his face. "That was my assignment. I carried those diamonds to our asset. Fuck. Fuck."

She felt that same terrible chill wash down her. "You - didn't know they were the Russian diamonds?"

Castle went still, one slow blink of his eyes as if to mask whatever that was that had gone through him, and then he turned his head to her. "I'm not privy to details, sweetheart. I do what they tell me."

She sat up straighter. "I wasn't accusing you. I just wondered how they were so damn recognizable by whomever told the Russians."

Castle's mouth parted; she felt his relief like it was a weight pressing into her and she was ashamed of it. Of how he trusted her and then didn't trust her, how he bared his neck to her like the dog and then never even flinched when he got whipped.

"You have a damn good point," he said, putting his hands on his hips. "How did they get back to the Russians? Fuck."

Eastman cleared his throat. "More precisely - more the point, anyway - who sent you to Colombia with hot diamonds? Someone wanted to get you killed?"

Castle's face went terrifyingly blank. "Not me. Not just me. Another one of his damn tests." 

"More than testing just you," Eastman said grimly. "I can think of at least one other person he was testing." 

Both men turned grim looks to her.

"Me?" Oh. Oh, shit. Her. "Because they'd get back to me. He wanted the Russians up my ass."

Castle growled. "I'm the only one allowed-"

"Shut the fuck up, Castle," she muttered, shooting him a look. "Can we not be territorial for five seconds?"

"No."

She shot him a withering look but into this stepped Eastman, holding up placating hands. "You're missing an even bigger picture here, which I think was his true intent. Or at least a plausible excuse. Get the diamonds back in circulation and see if they came home to roost - and in tracing those diamonds, it means proof positive there's communication and actual cooperation between the cartels in Colombia and the Russian mafia in Brighton Beach. And Richard, that's been on your agenda since you two had your adventure."

Castle had been on that this whole time? But Vice was her job, her fuck-up, and what did he think he could do? CIA didn't work stateside.

Well, Eastman did, clearly, since he was here enough to check up on her. Fuck, really, what did she know about what the CIA did stateside? It was only her covert agent who seemed to be needed overseas for every day of the year.

"So your father really fucking hates me, huh?" she said gamely, trying on a smile. 

Castle sank down to one of the metal stools, stared at the tabletop grimly. "And the Colombians are passing goods with the Russian mafia." He scraped his hand down his face and stared into the distance, and that scared her good. "Damn." 

"What does that mean exactly?" she asked. "Because I can't say I'm all that surprised. Colombian cartels funnel drugs through every major organized crime gang - they don't care who."

It was Eastman who answered, and his face was the same neutral it always was. She had not yet learned to read him, but she thought it held a touch more concern than usual. "Because you have to ask yourself what the Russians are getting paid for. Should be the other way around, right? Drugs coming in. But instead, these are diamonds being leveraged as payment for something the Russians have."

"Oh, fuck," she groaned, slumping to the tabletop. "Cold War arms. That's what they have."

"Colombians definitely aren't in it for the human trafficking," Castle muttered.

\-----

The table was spread with maps and two computers were up and running search queries on the CIA’s databases. The reports came spitting out of an ink jet printer faster than the dot matrix installed in the Vice department. Kate spent most of her time paging through those printouts looking for commonalities, overlaps between the Russian mafia’s movement in Brighton Beach - which was her territory anyway - and the known information about the cartel’s stateside agents.

There was a lot of fucking data. Her brain was mush after two hours and she found herself rubbing her eyes, trying to unsee the endless list of phone numbers placed inside known Russian mafia strip clubs. She really fucking hated strip clubs.

“I think this might be it,” Castle said quietly. She lifted her head, pushed herself off the stool to stand, her knees popping as she came up at his side. 

Eastman was hunched over a map with him, tracing a finger down the edge of Brighton Beach. “You’re right. This one.”

“Yeah?” she asked. 

“Activity spikes, even with the Vice department’s lax surveillance. They noted it, just didn’t seem to know why. And-” Castle pulled a sheaf of papers and tapped a number he’d highlighted. “This one. It’s a prefix I recognize. It’s not an actual cell phone, but a routing service. It masks your number, comes up looking like this.”

“You recognize it from work in Colombia?”

“Yeah. The bitch I gave the diamonds too. She’s the one who first used it. Introduced me to it, no less. Fucking hell.”

Beckett pressed her hands into the table and leaned in, fought to keep her clarity. “Okay, so it’s your - contact, whomever. Here in the city. Meeting up here at this-”

“Bar,” Castle supplied. “Gaming den too. Or so your own Vice reports-”

“Yes,” she clipped. “I know that. I know the fucking gaming dens in Brighton. What I’m getting at is - how come no one in the CIA knew she was here? Knew she had contacts here?”

“It’s not necessarily her,” Eastman cautioned. “Just someone who uses her tricks. Which she learned inside the cartel, at their feet. So the facts are really this: cartel business associates are making payment with diamonds the CIA passed them. Right here. This gaming hall and bar.”

“But how did they lead back to me?” she said. “When Castle and I got out of there, they didn’t know us. They obviously didn’t know us because it’s been nearly three years since that fiasco.”

“I’m so glad you finally admit it was a fucking fiasco-”

“Shut up, Castle,” she said, glaring at him. “Just because the diamonds are back doesn’t mean that they lead to me. I mean, we know they do. But how do they?”

Both men looked stumped. Jaws working. Eastman traced a line down his call log and shook his head. “Research is done. I’m going to get eyes and ears in here and see what we see. Might clear that up for us.”

Kate crossed her arms over her chest, straightening up, but Castle scrubbed both hands down his face, shaking his head like a dog as he came up.

Eastman glanced at him. “You sleep since you landed?”

Castle shot her a look, didn’t answer.

She scowled. “Castle. You haven’t slept?”

“I - you know I can do without.”

“You took a shot?” she said, giving him a once-over.

He grimaced. “No, I - no.”

Eastman sighed. “And you woke Beckett in the middle of the damn night. Look, the gaming den is closed, bar doesn’t open until noon. There’s a mattress in the room down the hall. Take it - I’ll work on getting our equipment in place.”

But Castle shook his head. “No, it’s fine,” he said. “I’m good.” 

She had never quite seen him in full spy mode before, working doggedly at a problem, unwilling to back down. He could give her a run for the money.

Eastman gathered the maps and printouts towards him, elbowing Castle out. “You both need sleep. Castle. I’m serious. Look at her.”

She had a moment’s bristling indignation, but instead she caught Eastman’s go with it from over Castle’s shoulder.

And well, she’d been wanting to get Rick Castle alone.

“Come on, Richard,” she murmured, reaching out to close her fingers around his wrist. She tugged, let him study her with that intent, all-consuming focus of his. 

She’d been wrong; she had seen him in spy mode before. 

In bed. Planning his conquest.

“Good,” Eastman said, apparently sensing Castle giving way. “But do me a favor? I don’t wanna hear you guys.”

Kate’s lips curled and Castle’s face went hilariously blank. She tugged on him harder and he flipped his hand around, laced their fingers together.

He led her out of the command center and down the lonely, dark hall.

\-----

“Cold,” she said, teeth chattering as she rubbed her arms in the room. Eastman had said it was a mattress but he hadn’t quite warned them of how damn bleak it was. “Too cold to get undressed.”

“Blanket,” Castle said cheerfully. He reached down and unfolded the red fleece blanket, unfurled it between them. “Come here, baby. Wrap you up.”

She shuffled into him, let him drape the blanket around her shoulders. He kissed her nose and she wrinkled it, stepped between his feet to press her body to his. 

He let out a long breath, all that posturing and charm going by the wayside. She let her forehead fall into his chin, his arms strong at her back, the blanket tickling her neck. It was somehow wrong, the way she kept leaning into him; it pricked at her pride.

“If I promise to keep the blanket around you, think we can do this?”

She laughed, rolling her cheek to his shoulder. “And by ‘do this’ do you mean fuck?”

“Of course.”

She smirked, touched her smile to that place at his neck. “Of course,” she said softly. “Maybe if you let me sit in your lap, I can shimmy out of my pants.”

“Lucky me,” he hummed. “I don’t need to take my pants off at all.”

She laughed, winding her arms around his waist and yanking up his shirt. He yelped as her cold fingers touched his skin, but the tease died out of it the moment she felt how wonderfully heated he was. “Damn, let me warm up for a second right here.”

Castle chuckled, but he tucked the blanket in around her neck and down into her sweatshirt. “Hold this for me, just like this. Gonna help you out.” 

She tilted her head, shoulders hunching in an unconscious move to keep the blanket with her. But Castle coasted his hands down to her hips and unbuttoned her jeans, teased her stomach with his warm hands.

“Castle,” she gasped, lurching into him at the feeling. She had missed this. Damn. So fucking much.

“Getting there, baby.” He gripped her ass and kneaded the backs of her thighs, tugged. She caught on immediately, bounced on her toes to give him warning.

When she jumped him, he caught her smoothly, but the blanket was in their way and he stumbled back, laughing, and fell to the mattress. Beckett landed hard over him, but he mostly cushioned her fall, lying back with her on top. She wriggled her body against his and he pushed his hands into her jeans.

Squeezed.

She hummed in appreciation. “Love your hands,” she murmured, dipping her head to kiss his neck. He smelled like gunpowder. “Two days watching me, baby?”

“It was hell,” he rasped. “All I wanted to do was grab you. Fuck you hard.”

She shivered and flexed against his hands, and he gripped her in response, but he started working her jeans down her hips.

The blanket did make it rather toasty, she had to admit. And Castle was a natural heater, keeping her close and warm. “Missed you,” she whispered. “Missed this, I mean.”

“Missed me,” he said proudly, pinching the back of her thigh when she huffed. “You missed me. I heard it. Don’t take it back and spoil my beautiful moment, baby.”

“You are such a fucking goofball. Did I or did I not say you had to be cool?”

He finally got her jeans down her thighs, and he crowed in triumph. “Who the fuck needs cool? You like me hot anyway, for those frozen little fingers of yours.”

She laughed, squirming on top of him to push her jeans all the way down. She gasped when his fingers tucked into her panties and went straight for her heat. “Whoa, fuck,” she moaned, dropping her head to his chest. She was curled on her side to get her jeans off, but he already had his fingers pressing into her sex. “Fuck. Fu-uck.”

“Gonna go slow, sweetheart. Sorry. Want to take my time with you, make up for two days of keeping my hands off.”

Her hips jerked into his hand, sweat beginning to collect at her lower back, behind her knees. She panted against his chest, caught his elbow if only to hold on.

Castle’s mouth brushed her forehead, over and over, and he worked his fingers relentlessly between her legs. She was on fire. Why had she been so cold before? She was burning.

“Come on, love. You can do it. I want to feel your legs clamp around my hand as you come.”

She moaned, burying her face in his chest to muffle the sound. He slicked his fingers deeper and then hooked them up, immediately pushing inside her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, and then her orgasm shook through her bones and left her weak.

\-----

She grunted and slapped his hand away. “Fuck.” He had to be grinning, because she could hear him licking his fingers clean of her. “Seriously, Castle. Couldn’t even wait for me to get undressed?”

A slurp of his tongue made her hot, and then he buried his wet fingers at the nape of her neck, making her shiver. “Nope, couldn’t wait. Two damn days, Beckett, or hadn’t you heard?”

“Oh, I heard,” she muttered, and wriggled her hip into his erection. “And I feel.”

He traced a wet line under her collar with his fingers, skimmed lightly so that everything tingled and flared with awareness. He was so damn pleased with himself, cradling her with one arm as he teased her spine.

She groaned and wriggled her panties off, and then she slapped them in his face.

Castle laughed, dragged them down and lifted them over her head. She had a moment’s horror as she realized she might have to fucking find those panties again, and she snatched at them.

“Oh, no, no. These are mine now.”

“You fucking bully-”

“I’m keeping these.”

“I’m not going commando with Eastman right here.”

“Where? Did he sneak in while I was fingering you?”

She slapped his chest. “You’re a bastard,” she muttered. “Now how are we doing this.”

“Blanket stays, I guess.”

“It fucking better.”

He was grinning. It was too dark to really see, but she knew by his silence he was trying to suppress it because he thought it wouldn’t get him very far. Good thing he didn’t know how very fucking much she wanted him inside her. If she’d had her way, her first orgasm at his hand wouldn’t have been - well - at his hand. 

“Top or bottom?” he said. “I’m up for either.”

She dragged her hand down to his groin and pressed into him, harder than she usually would on first pass. He growled and snagged her wrist, painfully, and she was jostled to one side, falling to the mattress as he attacked her mouth.

Their kiss was rough, the awkward meeting of two people who had tried for so long to hold it together. He was shoving her shirt up and popping open her bra even while he sucked on her tongue. She couldn’t catch her breath, taken off guard by her own intensity reflected back at her in the form of his body. He was hot and hard and heavy, and she was grappling him to get closer, closer, closer.

Her pulse thumped in her head, her blood roaring, but Castle jerked back from her, ripped off his shirt. “Too damn dark,” she muttered, pressing her fingers to his chest, tracing his ribs.

“Better to feel me,” he murmured at her mouth. She startled when he touched her thigh, surprised to find him there already. The rough material of his pants scraped her belly and she groaned.

His breath was hot against her, the dark pressing them into each other. She flattened an arm at his back and wanted closer, and suddenly her breasts were bared by a flick of his fingers.

“Fuck,” she hissed, her nipples beading at the abrasion of his chest. The light smattering of the hair on his chest made her whine, sensation cascading through her body.

“That’s right, baby. Almost there.” He gripped her thigh and hooked it over his hip as they laid side by side, so easy, so smooth a move that it lined him up perfectly.

Kate groaned, her heart thundering now, her whole body beginning to shake with the awareness of his erection touching her. He shifted his hips and his cock rubbed against her clit.

“Oh, God,” she gasped. She was so fucking ready for him. She wanted him so badly, and he was so damn good at this. He was so fucking good at setting her off. He was a fucking professional-

“Yeah, sweetheart,” he hummed, sounding totally in control of himself. Totally in mastery of her too. “That’s right, baby. Gonna be so good.”

Fucking professional. She gripped his hip as his cock nudged her, seeking entrance. 

“Wait,” she husked. Her hips bucked against her will, his erection burning at her cunt, so fucking good she nearly cried. But he was rigid with waiting on her, and she gulped down enough breath to ask. “You still - everything still good?”

“You’re always good,” he croaked. His grip on her ass tightened, tugging.

She felt herself being split open by him, his cock pushing against her. “I - I mean - you-” She moaned, dropping her forehead against his chin. “No condoms, Castle. No-”

“Fuck,” he cursed. His hips went absolutely still, and he gripped her chin and brought her face up to look at him. “Are you - but you - you’re on the pill and I know you’re not even regular enough to-”

She punched his ribs. “You fucking know better about me. You. Are you clean? You’ve been gone for a month, you asshole-”

“Fuck,” he snarled. And suddenly he thrust right into her, penetrating her sex so that she cried out. “Fucking hell, Beckett. Fuck. Don’t you think I’m a lot more fucking careful than that? My fucking job depends on it. I am careful.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” she gasped, whimpering at the huge feel of him inside her. “Oh, God, you have to move. I need you to move.”

He withdrew only enough to snap his hips back into her. She mewled and began to shake, her guts tightening with the fierce insistence of his cock.

“Twenty-nine days, Beckett. Twenty. Nine. Days. Why the fuck do you think I’m so damn anxious to have you? Fuck, you better come twice while I fuck you.”

She was shaking all over, whimpering every time he bottomed out inside her. The feeling of his body invading hers, the sweat that glued them together, and the suffocating heat of the blanket tenting them made her insensible. “Please, please,” she found herself chanting. “I need you-”

“You fucking better need me,” he growled. His hips pistoned into her, she felt her pelvis cracking open as he moved, but it wasn’t enough, wasn’t enough. “Get on top of me, Beckett. Right now.”

He was already rolling to his back, and she was suddenly impaled by his cock, sinking impossibly down on him. Her thighs spread at his hips and she pressed her hands against his chest, rubbed her breasts against him.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “That’s it. Fucking hell, that’s it.”

“You’re so fucking good at this,” she moaned, grinding her pelvis into him. His cock was so huge, how damn thick he was inside her. She pushed her forearms to his chest for leverage and worked her hips, and soon her orgasm was tightening in her guts.

She spilled out into climax, her head bowed forward and her hips dashing her sex against his cock. He gripped the back of her neck and began to thrust, fucking her from below, a wild and unchecked thing that made her shout.

“Shut the fuck up, Beckett,” he gritted. “Shut up. You’re gonna make Eastman blush.”

She cried out and came again, her head thrown back, her breasts crushed to his chest. Castle gave a cry of triumph and planted his feet, fucked her hard through the crest of her climax, and then his orgasm took over.

He was brutal in his release, holding her down to him, his fingers bruising, his mouth sucking fervently at her neck.

When she was limp on top of him, he dragged his arm up and kept her pressed there. She faintly heard his breath leave him, and then his voice, a little broken as he panted.

“Shut up, Beckett. Just stop talking.”

\-----


	4. Chapter 4

She was so tired. It was fucking frustrating to be so damn tired she couldn't even talk to him like they usually did, two bodies in the dark with whatever words managed to come for her. Okay, so he mostly talked, but when he was here, and she'd not seen him for a long time, the words had usually built up so she had at least something to say back.

Even if it was to simply thwack his ear and remind him to be fucking cool.

But at least this way Castle would sleep too.

He was tracing designs on her back with one hand, his other hand under his head and propping him up. Sometimes she thought he could see in the dark, or he wanted to, enough that she felt his eyes on her at night, soaking her in.

"Sleep," she mumbled, shifting at his side. She was half draped over his body, her shirt rucked up and his completely off (because he knew she loved that sensation of skin to skin at her breasts, and he always did that, didn't he? he gave her what she craved without comment or censure or even asking. God. Why did it matter so much? Why couldn't she get herself back together this time?)

"You sleep too," he said in the dark. "I woke you. And the night before, your light didn't go off until three in the morning."

"Stalker," she muttered.

"Yeah, but you knew that when this started, love." A sharp squeeze of her shoulders. "Go to sleep."

"You first."

Castle groaned and turned into her, and now their bodies were tangled, legs and arms and torsos flush. He nipped at her lips, not really starting anything, just letting her know he was frustrated with her. She liked that, she realized suddenly. She liked that. Because she wanted his attention. She wanted him to - to be with her. 

Fuck. This was not a good day for revelations. She did not need to become attached to this man any more than she already had. What was she doing to her-

"Kate," he sighed. "Sleep, love. Stop thinking so hard and sleep." He almost never used her first name these days. He had learned how to keep her, hadn't he? Learned what buttons to push so that she reacted to him exactly as he wanted her to. He rarely called her just Kate. He had insinuated the pet names so early on that they seemed throwaway and unmeaningful. He talked to her in terms of sex and getting laid and fucking, and if he was possessive and eager and inspired with it, it was at least in terms she could accept.

Why the fuck were her usually well-crafted defenses deserting her now? Her blinders falling away so that the penetrating cold reality couldn't be denied.

She had gone twenty-nine days before this. She had gone three times as much without him, without even a word from him. She had been in peril before because of him, because of herself, because of the work. Why had this come to the surface now?

"Kate, fucking hell. I am so damn serious. I've gone over the recommended forty-eight hours without sleep, but I will not fall asleep if you're lying here all churned up with ideas. You fucking shut it down, baby. Or I will fuck you into oblivion."

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" she snarled. But the - hilarity? - the bald way he used her own language to attempt to take care of her, to insist on her well-being... God, she was cracking up. She couldn't hang on to it. She couldn't be pissed when she was just so obscenely grateful to be right here, this mold-infested back room with its single mattress and bare bulb over head. 

"Damn it, Kate. We will get these guys, I swear to you. I will not let you face them alone."

She hated herself. She really fucking hated herself. But right now it felt too damn good to stop.

He was too good. And he needed to sleep, he required sleep to function at his super best, and she had made herself the promise long ago that she wouldn't be an interference, a hindrance, to him doing what he was made to do.

"I'm sorry," she whispered then, sliding her hand up to touch his lips in the dark. She could feel the huff of his surprise.

She was surprised too.

But it was exhaustion. It had to be. Tomorrow she'd wake up and be put to rights again. "I'm not worried about you having my back," she sighed. Her eyes closed tightly. She might as well say it. She hadn't been able to come up with the words earlier, after they'd first laid down together, so she kind of owed him. How little he asked of her in this. So- "I'm frustrated with myself. Don't worry - I'll sleep. But I won't say no to - to having you again."

He turned into her. Just that fast, she was being pressed down into the mattress with his hand skimming under her panties and his lips caressing her cheek. "You always have me, Kate. You know I'm terrible at being cool. But you will always have me."

And before she could take it back, before she could find some scathing remark to make it all not so real, he was pushing inside her. 

She moaned and spread her thighs for him, caught by an urgency that seemed all out of proportion to the night.

It had only been twenty-nine days. What was wrong with her?

\-----

Castle cradled her face in his hands, his elbows digging into the mattress as he stroked inside her. 

Stunned.

He was just -

She ripped him open in the best, most visceral ways, and he couldn't fathom how damn lucky he'd gotten just by fucking accident. One day he'd seen a woman walk into a bar for the sole purposes of not drinking, and it happened to be the week he had off - the first week in seven years - and it was her. It was this woman who moaned under him and met his body in these slow, rolling thrusts.

Slow.

She never did slow. Never slow twice in a row, and fuck, it was so damn good. She felt so good he could weep. Whatever wounds they dealt each other, there was this, this right here, this connection that superseded everything.

"Love," he murmured against her open mouth. 

He didn't have it in him to qualify it, to make it less than it was, and she whimpered, sounding like she was falling apart under him. This used to be the only time he could hope to get away with tenderness, but more and more now she responded to him, gave it back sometimes in the dark.

Something had to be wrong. Or she was sick. Had to be wrong. But he'd do his best to hold her together, keep her strong; he wouldn't be the reason she couldn't make it. (He always had to leave; he left her every time. Alone. He couldn't break her now, even if it made him feel so damn good to hear it back; he would be leaving.)

She needed more from him, and when he couldn't provide it, she needed to be strong enough to keep going. To be up at three a.m. with her light on and make it to her job the next morning.

"I won't let it touch you," he whispered, moving inside her. "I won't let them wreck your life." Like I have. "I won't let you fall apart, Kate."

She groaned and lifted her hips into his stroke, her inside muscles tightening like a fist around him. 

"I won't let you fall apart," he promised. "I got you, I'm here. I have you-"

"Please," she keened. Her body was trembling, shaking under his, her back arched hard and pressing herself against him as if to push him deeper. "Please."

He rubbed his thumbs under her cheeks and held her centered, anchored beneath him. His strokes were confident, measured; he wouldn't hurry. She was giving him this; she was in this with him, not forced or coerced; she felt it too, she was making love back to him.

Kate cried out and clutched the back of his neck, her arm tightening. "Please, please-"

"I won't let you fall apart. I won't let you break-"

"Please! Make me fall apart!"

His hips jerked in reflex, fucking her harder, and she keened once more, coming up under him like a wave, and then her orgasm burst over her, gripping and clutching at him. He thrust deeper, taking her with him, with him, harder, fucking her now as it burned through him, needing her.

She moaned and gave a harsh judder of her hips, but she wasn't passive beneath him. Her mouth against his neck, his jaw, her fingers dragging up his back, clutching his ass.

She tongued his ear and that's all it took, his climax slapping him dizzy and sapping the last of his strength. He fell over her, rooting inside for the last of his need, and then crashing to one shoulder and sprawling beneath the blanket.

She was breathing hard, but she turned into him as he fell to his back. Her body ranged out along his, sweat slicked and warm. Maybe overly so. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she just loved him and couldn't hold it in any longer. 

Make me fall apart. 

Maybe her orgasm was her one surefire way to say I love you too.

Kate's fingers stroked slowly along his hip, caressed his cock, and came up to rest over his heart. Protectively.

Yeah, she loved him.

He kept leaving her, but she loved him anyway.

Castle cupped the back of her shoulder and held her close, kissed the arch of her eyebrow. "Gonna fall asleep, love. Gotta sleep." Love you.

"Me too," she sighed.

\-----

He woke twice during the night/morning.

The first was when she rolled off of him in her sleep and his lungs expanded out in a sudden vacuum. He was just oriented enough to follow, slumping into her and dragging the blanket with him. She must have been half-awakened as well, because she shivered and pushed her leg between his, curled into him.

He tried to wait to be sure she was settled, but he was already in the middle of his deepest sleep cycle and his body wouldn't be denied. He fell asleep half on top of her and didn't move.

The second time he woke, she was shoving on his shoulder and whispering urgently in his ear. He roused, came to alert immediately, but for some reason, she curled both arms around his head and neck and hushed him.

"S'okay, it's okay," she murmured. Her lips grazed his ear. "Didn't mean to wake you. My fault. Sleep."

But he wasn't tired, not this second, so he must have gotten one cycle's worth - the four hours he needed for the three day extended period. Beckett, on the other hand, seemed wildly out of character, humming and cradling him against her, consoling him for some make-believe grief.

And that's when he realized she had tears on her cheeks. She was awake but she'd woken badly again, another instance where she'd been ripped from nightmares, but this time he hadn't been awake to catch her, to hold her, to reassure her she was living still.

But she'd turned into him anyway.

She hated it when this happened. He was never allowed to mention it later. 

He needed four more hours to reset his endurance, but she needed it too. Castle feigned mostly confused sleepiness and fumbled at her, turned her around within the embrace of his arms. She sucked in a shuddering breath and he ignored the fallout from her night terrors to encase her with himself, his knee shifting between her thighs, arm around her neck, the other tucked up between her breasts. 

Beckett instantly went still. Her heart rate was fluttering like a bird, but she was quiet and hunched back into him. He laid an open-mouthed kiss to the back of her neck and stayed right there, confident she was enclosed once more, safe within him.

Her shoulders slumped. Her breathing evened out.

She turned her lips into his bicep where it was hooked under her neck and supporting her head like a pillow, and her kiss was soft with a little teeth at the end. The kiss he loved best from her. Tenderness towards him with her fight, her spark, her flavor as a reminder.

He was sliding along the edge of that first plunge back into sleep when she twined her fingers with his between her breasts.

She had done the same the first week he'd known her, his second chance as he liked to think of it. She'd had a head cold and had looked so pitifully at him, asked crawl in with me? and of course he had. Of course he had climbed into bed behind her and kept her warm as she'd shivered.

He kept her warm now, and safe, and fell asleep knowing she at least had him for tonight. 

\-----

Beckett woke before him.

It was such a rare thing to be awake when he was not, and it was such an intermittent thing to be with him in a bed, any bed, that she couldn't quite move.

Whether it was simply that she was surprised, or more complexly that she couldn't bring herself to move, she wasn't going to analyze. She was aware that they had a long road ahead of them on this, that the Russian mafia and the Colombian drug cartels were serious business, but the overwhelming doom had faded with the night.

A grey light washed through the stark room. The windows were papered over, fresh newspaper it seemed, and she wondered if Castle and Eastman had set up here two days ago, gotten everything prepared and handled while they attempted to make contact with her. Castle, biding his time to reach her.

It was cold out there. The winter had fully settled into the city and the air was biting, leaching all strength and endurance from the masses. When she hadn't been at the Twelfth, she had spent the past month buried in her apartment with her mother's case, what she'd been able to collect of it, wrapped in a blanket much like this one, the dog pressed into her side for warmth.

Despite the chill in the air that burned her nose, she was deeply warm now. The man at her back gave off enough body heat that sweat gave a damp sensation to the collar of her shirt, along her neck, her scalp. She'd been setting the temp in her apartment low, and waking up to clammy fingers and an ache in her bones, but not this morning.

And if she knew Castle at all, she knew she had time to lie here and think. He was as punctual as clockwork in his sleeping patterns, better than an alarm. He never failed. And while he was dead to the world, she had time.

She had time.

Seemed such a luxury these days. This year. She'd pushed harder than ever and gotten far - detective in Vice and the attention of her Captain. Her Sergeant was still an asshole who sent her out as bait or set her up as a stripper in a club rather than listen to her insights, but when push came to shove, she was integral to his team. She had made herself be.

But this. If the Russian mafia had her number, knew her face and her place and her involvement in that fiasco in Brighton Beach, then her days were numbered in Vice.

If, however, Castle gave her actionable intel, if Eastman and her covert spy managed to pry off the top on the damn Russian mafia, she might pull this off. She might land the biggest fucking arrest of her career.

She'd lose her anonymity, lose her worth to Vice, but she'd prove her skills as a detective and surely - surely - Captain Montgomery would give her a slot in Homicide.

God. So much depended on this working out right.

She was so fucking grateful it was Castle at her back. He might not show up for weeks or days or months, he might bully the fuck out of their every encounter, but he was more than solid when it came to the work. 

In this, he had never let her down.

Beckett turned slowly in his arms and laid face to face with him, this man who coveted her. She didn't try to touch him - he'd wake for sure, he always did - but she took the time to study him. The immature set of his mouth and the hard structure of his chin, the faintly exotic slant of his cheekbones and the deep command of his closed eyes. 

He fucked her up. And she knew she did the same to him. But neither of them could quite stop. She had changed her locks this time (again, a voice mocked) and he'd come right through anyway, but of course that paled in comparison to the team sitting on her place, the shit she was deep in. She had forbade him from calling her (at all hours, expecting her to get naked and finger herself for him on the webcam or breathe hard into the phone even if she was at work or it was four in the morning). She had done everything she could to prevent this.

She had sabotaged them both.

And yet, here-

Castle jerked in his sleep and his eyes flared open - a sharp and piercing blue - before slamming shut again. His body slumped into her and she was carried to her back by the weight of him. His mouth snuffled at her chest like a good dream, and she closed her own eyes.

And yet-?

She didn't need to finish that sentence; she never had. So long as and kept coming, so long as Castle returned, returned, returned, she didn't much care to put a period on it. 

\-----


	5. Chapter 5

Castle unwound his limbs from the blanket and hurriedly tossed it around her shoulders. "Here, shit. You regular people and your weakness to cold."

Beckett slapped his bare chest, that sting of skin and bone that he'd come to perversely rely on. Meant Beckett was steady; she was with him, up for anything.

"Find my fucking underwear, Castle."

"No," he said simply, reaching into the twisted, drawn-up fitted sheet that had come loose from the mattress sometime during the night (probably during fucking, which - yes - smelled like them, ahhh-)

"Yes. You asshole. Underwear. This regular person isn't going outside in that shit storm without underwear. So you better not have lost it."

"Of course I didn't lose it," he scoffed. "I have it right here." He stood up and reached into his pants pocket, abandoning his fly to tug loose the scrap of black stretchy lycra that was her sexy panties. He dangled them in front of her face. "See?"

"Bastard," she muttered, but without heat, and she swiped at them.

He wanted to refuse, but she was a regular person, and as he'd come to understand these last few years, their bodies reacted very differently to temperature extremes and conditions. He had used to be entirely ignorant of her needs, but at least now he wasn't being an unconscious asshole.

She glared up at him but brought the black panties in under the blanket, torquing her body to put them on out of view.

"I hate this," he sighed, putting his hands on his hips. "Twenty-nine days, baby, and doing it in the dark means I still haven't seen you naked."

She tossed him something that must have meant to be a glare, but in the next moment, she was shedding the blanket so that it pooled around her hips, and then she was pulling her shirt off over her head.

His breath caught, his jaw dropped. He hadn't intended to - but this was - oh, fuck, she was freezing but so damn beautiful.

He squatted back down to the mattress and wrapped his arms around her, hauling her into his lap and mauling her mouth. She moaned and shivered, her teeth chattering hard enough to bite his lip - or that was just Beckett. He caressed her sides and cupped her breasts, rubbed heat into her nipples as she writhed against his groin.

He'd woken up hard for her. Of course he had. But he'd held off, and she had jumped right into speculation about the Russians and Colombians, and he knew when to turn it off and pay attention. So he had turned it off.

She was very definitely turning it on.

"Kate," he gasped. Her flesh in his hands, shaped by his grip, reformed for him. "I'd really like to fuck you."

"Didn't drop the blanket to freeze my ass off," she muttered, already working at the button of his pants. He hadn't even managed to zip himself back up from last night, and she was making damn good use of the lapse.

Her fingers were cold, but damn it felt good. He kept pulling back to look at her, stare at her body, take her in. The creamy smoothness of her body, the faint bumps at her back where his pants had pressed seams into her skin. He rubbed her spine and she arched for him, seemed to sense that he wanted a show.

She abandoned his cock to rub her breasts, to throw her head back and grind into his lap. He palmed her thighs and kneaded her flesh, squeezed her ass in encouragement. She had her eyes on him as she moved, a lap dance in the offering, her hands framing her breasts. The undulation of her torso met his lower abs, his groin, and her ribs and her stomach muscles bunched and worked, intensely erotic.

Castle caressed her flanks, palmed her sides to feel her move. She had some rhythm all in her head, and though goose bumps chased his touch, she seemed just as into it as he was.

"Touch yourself," she murmured. "Take yourself out for me."

He groaned and rooted between them for his cock, unfolding it from boxers and pants. She watched him as he watched her, their eyes meeting in the middle and that electric connection arcing between them. Her body was sinful, every thrust of her hips and rock of her pelvis coinciding with the deep ache in his balls as he handled himself for her.

"I want you inside me," she said, her hands coasting down her stomach and pausing between them. "But I want you to watch first."

"Oh, God, yes." He stared, eyes raking over her body as she used one hand to spread her sex open for him, the other sliding between her folds. Light strokes, giving him plenty to see, the flushed pink of her sex, the angry red peak of her clit, the dark curls that framed it all. He let his eyes travel up her body, the beautiful and hard arch of her torso where she was holding herself upright, slightly leaning back so he could see. 

He skimmed his hands at her thighs in encouragement, took his touch back along her knees which were so tight at his waist, and behind to her ankles. She had hooked her feet together to hang on to him, and when he dragged his hands back along her gorgeous legs, she shuddered.

"I'm gonna - make myself come," she whispered, her chin tilting up, body arching. 

"Oh, love, please do," he husked, gripping her inside thighs. "You need a little help?"

"If you're - offering," she panted. Her breasts were so flushed, heaving.

He'd normally tongue her nipples and suck her off, but he wanted to see, and he didn't want to ruin the show she clearly was enjoying as well. So he skimmed his fingers in and around her own, touched her wet places, slicked through her folds to widen her, or back through her kinky hair to scratch at her skin. She grunted and her lashes fluttered, like she was having trouble keeping her eyes open, and he used the blunt nail of his thumb to flick her clit.

She gasped and nearly came out of his lap, rising up so that her knees dug into his hips, her wet and open sex creamed his chest. He caught her with one hand at the back of her thigh, but the other he kept working her clit, hard and probably nearly-painful scrapes that made her body tremor.

She twisted furiously at her nipple, right in front of his face, angry abuse as she thrust into his fingers - and her own. She was still working at it, pumping two fingers inside herself now, her body jerking in and out of rhythm as she got so damn close.

But not quite there. He knew she had the most trouble doing this alone when he was right here available, like a damn mental block (he liked to tell himself that her body insisted on having him), so he opened his mouth and took her nipple inside.

He bit fingers and flesh alike, and she stiffened, a sharp cry rattled in her throat, and then she broke apart in a dirty, intense little orgasm.

Castle rolled her nipple in his mouth and let go, shoved aside her fingers, and he brought her down hard into his lap.

Kate moaned and snaked an arm around his neck, her wet fingers curling at his ear. He grabbed his cock a little too hard in his haste, nostrils flared as he tried to control himself, and then he was shoving high and fast inside her.

Her noises were stutters in her breath, her cheek pressed tightly to his own as she mewled. Her hips rocked and he positioned her a little better, one arm banded at her lower back for leverage.

"Now, love," he husked. "Move."

She moaned and gripped him tighter, thrust herself against him. She trembled and scraped fingernails down his abs, got a hand between them to squeeze the base of his cock as she rocked.

He let out a strained breath, kissed her roughly. She was moving now, hips and thighs and the wet mouth of her sex around him. She sucked on his tongue. He could do nothing to help himself, sitting cross-legged on the mattress with his hands full of her. He was at her mercy, and she was dragging it out, making it slow, and vicious in the withdrawal.

"Oh, fuck me, Kate," he groaned. "You feel so damn good. Not fair, not fair what you do to me. Fuck, baby. I can't - can't - you've ruined me for anything else than you."

"Damn it, Castle," she hissed in his ear. Her body was moving, every pause at the end of her thrust like agony. Like she was paying him back for something. "You did this." Her teeth bit his neck. "Made me. Miss this." A groan and ghosting of lips. "So much."

"Oh, God, yes," he husked. He caressed her sides, up to her breasts, touching everything he could get his hands on, every round curve and hard line, her flesh chilled in places and hot at others. He went back to her sex and rubbed her clit against his cock and she sped up a little, shoving herself down on him harder now, harder, a jolt every time at the end.

And then her inner muscles clutched at him.

She cried out.

Her body crushed against him and he knew it was over; she was coming, she was so hot and writhing in his lap, speared by his cock as she shattered apart. 

And then he carried her back down to the mattress and fucked her through the last of hers, right on into his own, his orgasm violent through them both, the rough seas of a winter squall.

Overwhelming.

He might have accidentally said I love you. He hoped like hell she pretended not to hear.

\-----

Kate sank back to the mattress and sighed.

She felt so damn good.

Like a switch had been flipped. Like whatever was wrong wasn’t wrong any more. How could it be?

Castle lifted his head. Kissed her lips softly. “Not enough. Not nearly enough of you.”

She hummed and cupped his face, fingers dragging back through his scalp. “You got another haircut.”

“You like rubbing it,” he murmured, like that explained everything.

She thumbed his eyebrow and stroked back along his temple. “I also like when your bangs flop over your forehead,” she whispered. Like it was a secret.

“I like you touching me,” he answered back. His lips coasted at the inside of her wrist and he watched her for a moment. “You look beautiful, Kate.”

She flushed, stupidly pleased by that, and he dipped his mouth to hers, rubbing lips, the slight touch of his tongue. She curled her fingers at his ear and wrapped an arm around his back. His skin was overwarm and it heated hers, kept her liquid.

He lifted up. His fingers caressed her cheek and combed through her hair, and he brought a lock of it to his nose.

She shimmied under him. “Need a shower, I’m sure.”

“Smells like you,” he said. His lips touched her hair and dropped it, and then he skimmed his fingers at her bare collarbones. “You’re exquisite. Kate Beckett. Wow.”

She squirmed, cheeks heating, his intensity making her uncomfortable. She frowned, but he shook his head, huffed a breath, rolled his eyes at himself.

“One more thing I want to do. Hang out right here a second.”

And then Castle crawled down her body and set to work cleaning her up, his tongue and lips suckling at her sex. She groaned, jolted with sensation, and gripped his head as her hips rolled up.

He hummed against her and she grit her teeth, already shaking when he began truly eating her out.

\-----

She was arching, bucking up against his mouth, her hips juddering with every stroke of his tongue. She couldn’t stop herself, couldn’t control it; her body wanted him. More, more-

Castle pressed his thumbs against her clit and sucked.

She screamed, her knees jerking up as if to protect herself. He stroked her through the violence of her orgasm, loving her to the other side, the soft and patient and sure work of his mouth.

Castle was pressing her legs back down, hard, hips breaking with the force of him. Before she could open her eyes, he was hovering over her, rubbing his cock between the wetness of her folds.

“Oh, fuck, yes,” she husked. She hoped to hell Eastman wasn’t too close, because this was going to get loud. “Fuck me, Castle. Hard.”

“No problem.” He gripped her hip and his thumb bruised the inside of her thigh. “All I want in life.”

“Shut up,” she muttered, slapping at his side. He was laughing into her hair when his cock thrust home.

She moaned.

He fucked her.

It was rough, a ragged meeting. His hips knocked hers askew, his grip crushing her bones. She arched her back and her breasts were chafed by his body. She dug her fingers into his back and knew she was piercing his skin with it. 

“You’re so fucking tight,” he grunted.

“Happens after thirty days sober.”

He laughed, hips stuttering so that her clit was abraded. She yelped and felt her knees squeezing his thighs in response. He did it again, a jerk and grind that made her curse. Friction and raw nerves, the highest edge of pain.

“Leg up,” he gritted out. His thumb was digging into the back of her thigh as he shoved her upward. She pulled her knee up to his ear, and he hooked her thigh at his neck - thrust.

She moaned, one heel digging into the mattress, the other at his shoulder. The change of angle, the severity of his cock inside her - she was going to explode. She couldn’t hold on.

“Rick,” she gasped. “You have to come. Right now. You have to fucking thrash-”

In response, he shoveled her up by her shoulders and gripped the back of her neck, so tightly her pulse pounded in her head. And then he was fucking her wildly, heedless of either of them, and she met his aggression with as much force as she could, feeling it approach, feeling it shove her over the edge.

She was going to come.

She was going to come.

Oh, fuck.

Kate sank her teeth into his neck and sucked, and he bellowed her name and spilled hotly inside of her. His hips thrust as he came, rough and intense, and as he crushed her with his body, her own orgasm spiraled out into darkness, black infinity.

\-----

They were both breathless. Boneless.

Well, fuck, he finally was anyway. She was still unable to drag her eyelids open, but at least he had managed to ease her leg back down and flop beside her.

He laughed.

She flung a hand out and slapped his side, and he laughed again. Little harder than before, a hum at the end of the sound that she liked on him.

“Well, hell,” he panted. “That was damn good.”

“Thank you.”  
He laughed again and this time he rolled - she could feel the mattress shift. His elbow brushed her breast as he settled in closer. She turned her head and cracked an eyelid and saw him on his stomach, cheek to the back of his hand, watching her.

“You’re welcome,” he answered, lips curling. “Gotta admit. Best sex ever.”

“Ever,” she agreed readily. “You drive me fucking crazy - in bed and out.”

“I’ll take it. And ditto, kitten.”

She grunted and slapped him again, but rolled to drape her body half over his. With her breasts at his back and tricep, she laid her cheek along his shoulder and kissed the welt she had raised. “I hate drawing blood,” she muttered.

He laughed and shifted under her. “You like having blood drawn though.” His hand lifted and caught the back of her head, scratched. “Hickeys.”

“Mm. My lips. My neck. My cunt. Yeah, true.”

“Your cunt.” He seemed to roll the word around in his mouth. She shifted a knee up to keep her balance on his back and curled her arm at his ribs. He let out a sigh. “Like that word. Good memories.”

She patted his bicep, curved her fingers there to feel the muscle. He was a strong man, not just fit but actually hard, his muscles honed by trauma and danger. No barbells and deadlifting for Castle. He just fucking worked.

“Remember when you followed me on the subway?” she murmured.

“Yup.”

“You had one arm up, holding on to the overhead bar.” She skimmed her fingers at his bicep. “Why I said yes.”

“My arm?”

“Arms. Abs. Thighs.” She kissed the back of his shoulder and licked his skin. “Hands,” she whispered.

“Hands?”

She stroked her palm down to cover his hand, laced their fingers together. “Wide. Strong. Erotic.” She sighed and nudged her nose down into the thickness of his trapezius where it bunched at his shoulder blade. “Dependable.”

Castle didn’t speak and she closed her eyes, laid her cheek to his skin once more. When the silence had gone on, his fingers suddenly curled in her hair and tugged a little.

“Do you still think that about me?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. Why was it so much easier to talk to him when they didn’t have to see each other? In the dark. On his back so he wasn’t looking at her. So her secrets weren’t spilled out.

His fingers scratched at her scalp. “I’m almost never here. I miss so many important things, don’t even know when it happens. Your dad - and I’m in fucking Colombia or Cairo or hell, recertification at the damn office. Baby, I can’t call myself dependable.”

She sighed. She didn’t know how to answer that, if there even was an answer. Everything he said was true, had been true. Those things had happened. 

She usually didn’t have words. The reassurances weren’t here now, but she knew other things had happened. She could report it back honestly, without snark or sarcasm. 

She could do that.

“You come when I call.” She squeezed his hand, fingers tightening through his. “And last night you came for me. I never once doubted you had my back. Not just that you’d walk into fire for me, but that both of us would come out of it on the other side.”

\-----

There was only a sink and a toilet, which they both made use of, one after the other, taking turns with that awkward we’ve never had to live together kind of politeness. She ran wet fingers through her hair and eyed it critically in the warped mirror, and Castle came back in from the hall with soap.

“Here,” he said, handing her the bottle. It was men’s two-in-one shampoo, which was better than nothing, and after fucking on that old mattress on the floor, she felt like she needed it. 

“Well, here goes nothing,” she muttered. 

“You washing your hair?” he asked, sliding in behind her. Body heat dialed up, her fingers fumbling on the bottle.

“I’m gonna try,” she admitted. “Kinda gross after all - that.”

He grinned, eyebrow wriggling. “All that fun. Damn, I missed you.” Before she could react, he snagged the bottle out of her hands and reached past her to turn on the taps in the sink. “Let it get warm and then sit on the toilet seat and bend over. I’ll do my best. Better than you trying to do it.”

She wasn't sure why, but she sat meekly on the toilet lid at his command, bent forward until her forehead touched the side of the low mop sink. The sound of the water against metal was loud enough to cover the shudder that moved through her, loud enough to make her thoughts tumble through her head.

Something about the way he'd looked at her and said he'd missed her, half cavalier, but also so... sincere. The way his honesty had bubbled out of his mouth in that moment of boyish enthusiasm, words they tried not to say to each other after-

After he'd found her crying.

Damn it.

His fingers combed wetly through her hair, began soaked the short ends. She'd chopped it off after. And why? Because he had liked running his fingers through it down her back as she laid over him? What a fucking stupid thing to do - and for a guy, when she'd told herself all along that none of this was for him.

"Hair's growing out again," he said, like he was thinking about it too.

She nodded against the sink and his fingers sank into her scalp, scratching. Soaking water all the way to her ears. Her shoulders came down, her body relaxing fraction by fraction to the heat of the water. To the steady, strong manipulation of his hands.

None of this was for him.

All of this was for him.

God. She had reworked her life around-

No. Not really. Just when he was here, only when he was here was it so upside down and precarious and terrible. She felt like she was hurtling to the earth at top speed, shoved out of a plane with no parachute, the urgent and thrilling ride.

Oh God, she loved it, didn't she? She craved it. How he made her feel. Running around with no sleep, (no panties either; he stole them), no back-up but him, no idea what tomorrow looked like, going full-tilt down dark alleys and across rooftops with her gun with this bristling and capable (more than capable, so fucking good) covert agent at her side.

She was sick. There was something wrong with her. To need this. The clasp of his hand and the tug into absolute insanity.

His hands came back with shampoo and he slicked it at the base of her skull first, ran the soap through her hair to the very ends. He piled it at the back of her head and made suds, massaging her scalp with hard fingers.

Insanity?

It might actually be the only sane, quiet place she'd ever found. It was a maelstrom, but she was at the center, the collected, cool center with him. It was - exciting. Life was loud when he was here; it all seemed possible.

He was a fucking spy. If Rick Castle, a spy, had followed her home one day, then anything could happen. Her plan became feasible again, and not just a burning coal stuck in her throat. Make detective, get into Homicide, open her mother's case, solve it. Bring her killer to justice.

Bring her killer to justice.

It was within her reach; she was so close.

And as much as it galled her to have him a part of things, she had come to understand that he backed her up. Whatever the insanity, he backed her up.

Diamonds and the Russian mafia - that had been her play, her stupid and reckless plan (she hadn't intended on getting sold into slavery, but the thought had been in the back of her mind that it might come to that), and yet here he was, joyfully determined to make this one a win.

Joyfully. 

It had been a long time since she'd brushed the edges of joy when it came to her mother's case.

Castle's fingers dragged through her hair, cupping it under the water. 

Beckett held her breath.

The water rinsed the soap down the drain, slinking around her ears and neck, down her cheeks to her chin and dripping to the floor.

She closed her eyes and reached out, snagged her fingers in the pocket of his cargo pants. 

She could feel the soft bulge of her panties where he'd taken them, but she left them there.

It was all within her reach again. Figure out how to handle the Russians, bring them in to the Twelfth, and she was as good as promoted.

\-----


	6. Chapter 6

Beckett was wringing the water out of her hair as she followed Castle into the main room. The place hadn't changed overnight: it was still the industrial cold of steel tables and crumbling concrete with the occasional laptop or tub of gear. Not that it was slipshod work, only that it was bare minimum, and she recognized this didn't have the sanction of Castle's father.

She looped her hair around her wrist and gritted her teeth at the drip of cold down her neck.

"How's it look?" Castle asked his partner.

Eastman handed her a twist tie normally used on computer cords, and she took it with a faint smile. She twisted her wet hair up and back and twisted the wires of the tie and it held.

"Just got the bug in place, have the computer program monitoring for key words. Might have to sit and listen in a few times to be sure, but it should work."

Castle nodded and glanced to her, as if seeking her approval, and she swiped water from her neck and nodded back.

Off-book mission. Would he get in trouble for this? Would Eastman? And yet here they both were.

"Alright, part two," Castle said. "We need a way in on the NYPD's investigation."

"That's me," she said, sinking to one of the stools pulled up to the metal table. 

"We need more than an asset to feed information," Eastman answered, shaking his head. 

"It's the NYPD's case," she bit out. "My arrests, my shit that started this in the first place."

"But it's federal RICO shit, it's terrorism and drug money and arms dealing," Castle answered smoothly, leaning a hip against the table at her side. "It's going to get kicked up the food chain whether you want it to or not - whether your captain wants it to or not."

Beckett grit her teeth and sank her head into her hand. "But - that's not god. Those diamonds-"

"Which is why we step in first," Eastman said. "I have a couple buddies in the FBI who'd pull this case for me. I'll go in with them, the man in black, as usual, and I'll make it clean."

She lifted her head, studied Eastman. "That's going to mean official - shit. Whatever it is you have to do to work stateside, to-"

"You don't want to know," he said softly, a quirk of his lips. "And I can't really tell you either." 

Castle's hand came briefly to her back. "Eastman will be on the federal side of this, and he'll control the flow of information to the NYPD. However, since you're the point of contact for the police anyway, it will be easy enough to coordinate. We make our arrests as a kind of joint task force, based on federal information - the bug of course - and it goes through the system."

"And the diamonds?" she asked, straightening up as his hand persisted, his touch heating her skin through the thin t-shirt. "How do we explain the Russian mafia coming after me?"

"You have worked a few cases in Brighton Beach. And as a uniform you were part of the team that took down their New York human trafficking operation. The police record isn't closed, you know - they saw the diamonds circulate back through, knew they had come from Vadim's idiot gambling, and they looked up the record. Found your name, your picture, made the connection."

"But the NYPD can't know I took those diamonds gambling," she said. "Or that you did, Castle, fuck. Vadim will say that you took those off him, that I was just some girl-"

"Vadim is dead," he said quietly.

She went still.

"Vadim is dead, and so is everyone else who was in that room. But for a couple of girls and a few other players who weren't involved in the Russian's operation."

Her jaw dropped.

"I took care of it," Eastman said. She swiveled her head to him, horror washing through her. "Had to be done. Castle's cover is too important to break."

"Oh my God." She hadn’t asked, or hadn’t wanted to know, but maybe she had sensed it. Maybe she’d known what she’d asked of him.

"So it won't come back to him," Eastman continued. "And there's no Vadim to say who or what. Russians know Vadim lost their diamonds, very soon after that their operation out of that bar was shut down, and now a couple years later - the diamonds came back. All they can assume is that it was some part of a police action. They looked up the record and found your name, you roughly match descriptions they had, so yeah, it came back on you. My guess is they have teams sitting on a few others - the lead detectives for one."

"Wait. Hang on. If the lead detectives-" She jerked to her feet. "Their lives could be in danger, right this second. We just arrested the team sitting on me. We don't know their plan, why they were following me around-"

"I'm pretty sure it will continue to be surveillance," Eastman said calmly. "Castle was the one who couldn't stand leaving you under surveil."

She glanced to him, but he was staring at the table. Grim. She shook her head. "We have to warn the lead detectives. Anyone in that public record. As soon as possible."

Eastman rubbed his chin and shook his head. "Alright. Fine. We're still waiting for information from the bug. I need to call my friends in the FBI to pull this case. You two - go hunt down the other surveillance teams."

Beckett got moving, but right before she hit the door, she heard Eastman call back Castle. She paused just past the door, in the hall, and couldn't help listening.

"You stay out of this, Castle. It's understandable that her Army boyfriend helped her collar the guys sitting on her. But it is not okay for the two of you to partner up and ride cowboy through the city, making arrests. Keep your name off the record. If she has to do it alone - then she has to do it alone."

Beckett hurried down the hall, quickly, quietly, her palms prickling with sweat, her stomach churning.

Alone.

She had to do this alone.

"Beckett. Fuck. Wait up."

She halted at the elevator, smoothed out her face.

She couldn't bring him into this. His father-

She would have to figure out a way to ditch him.

\-----

Castle jumped onto the subway and snagged her by the belt loop, a possessive growl in his throat that caused heads to turn.

She glanced at him and she could see he was furious.

"Stop trying to ditch me," he snarled in her ear. 

She kept her face clean. "The doors closed," she answered. "If you can't keep up-" She shrugged.

His hand gripped the back of her neck, his face close. “I'm stupid for you, but don't mistake me for an idiot."

She stiffened, eyes shifted their way, watching, before darting away again. She reached back and calmly took Castle's hand, laced their fingers together as she leaned into him. The pole was between them, but she imagined his body was harder than the pole. All stiff indignation.

"Baby, I never said you were stupid." A long look, a flick of her eyes to the car around them.

"I don't care what they think," he hissed. "I care what you think. Why are you deliberately trying to ditch me?"

She worked her jaw, stepped closer until she could kiss him, lips against lips, stealing his breath. A long kiss, with her tongue clever and seductive against his, suckling lightly at his bottom lip until she pulled back.

Ah, there it was. Stupid for her was right.

He blinked. Something crestfallen and childishly abandoned was in his eyes. 

Her heart flipped. She touched his cheek with her free hand, this man that radiated nothing but absolute adoration in this moment. "Love, this isn't your fight." She kissed him again to keep his words down, silence him. "I did this. You're supposed to remain invisible. Let me make a few arrests, do my job, and keep you clear of it."

"I can be invisible without you getting rid of me," he whined.

"You should help Eastman," she murmured. "He's going to have his hands full, fixing my mistake."

"I can't go near it or my father will be all over us."

"You could listen to the bug," she suggested, pressing her body closer to his. It was warm on the subway, and he was even warmer, but the heat of him was more intense than mere body heat. It was courage and strength itself, and she soaked it in. "We need to know how they knew about me-"

"Ka-ate-"

"It would protect me," she said, blatantly manipulating him. "The people who know I was there-"

"I took care of them," he growled. "I always take care of you. You're not going up against a surveillance team with the kind of gear they had. Not alone."

"You said Foster and Parks weren't in danger," she rebutted. 

"They're not in danger," he hissed. "But you will be if you stroll up to their van and knock on the door, Beckett. Don't ditch your best resource just because you think I can't cover my own ass. I know how to keep out of it."

She grit her teeth. "Castle. You've done enough for me. I have to do this alone." She closed her eyes and shook her head, opened to see his mulish face. "I'm usually alone, Rick. I have to be able handle the shit I stir up - without you."

His nostrils flared, but his face shut down. All emotion wiped clean, just like that.

She knew she'd hurt his feelings, but it was only the truth.

He shook his head. "True." His voice was gravel. "But the times when you do have me are rare enough that you should use me. There are things I offer, Beckett, that are for your benefit." His mouth opened and then closed again, and she happened to see - for an instant - how it had gone through him, like darkness swimming beneath the surface of his eyes. "Use me." His hand swiped down his face. "Let me at least believe I can be helpful to you at all."

She swallowed hard, staring out the windows to the dark tunnel as it flashed past the subway. Her heart was pounding.

His fingers untangled from hers, shaking her off, and then he reached up and cupped the side of her face, cupped her ear so that all she heard was the fast beat of her own heart - and maybe his. He pressed her down to his chest and touched his lips to her forehead.

"Please, Kate. Let me delude myself - a little while longer - into thinking I'm good for you."

\-----

Detective Sheilita Foster was apparently on call this weekend because she was at home that Friday morning, working in her kitchen. Castle pressed against Beckett’s shoulder and they watched the shadow from five stories below, the woman’s outline just visible past the blinds.

“You see anything?” he murmured.

“Five blocks down, two possibles.”

Castle shifted forward on the bus stop’s bench, fixed his pant leg with a vague look down the way. “Mm. Let me recon. Swing back and meet you by the mailbox around the corner.”

Beckett made a noise, but she didn’t protest - or didn’t have time to come up with a better plan - because he was already on his feet, checking the bus schedule as pretense to leaving the stop.

She didn’t hiss his name or call after him, so at least she could fall in line. And she hadn’t talked any more shit about dumping him, not after that scene in the subway, so he was fairly confident that she’d be where he told her to be when he circled back around.

Castle adopted the brisk walk of the native New Yorker, pulling his shoulders in and keeping his head straight, eyes ahead. He walked with purpose, eating up the blocks, and even though it was chilly and he had no coat, he didn’t stand out. He blended with the best of them, and he was slipping through the minimal foot traffic with ease

She was right. Two possibles this block. A construction van parked outside a brownstone without the telltale platforms for renovation, and a plain white delivery truck with its company name and number rubbed out. Drivers sitting behind the wheels of both. Opposite sides of the street.

She had a good eye. She was damn good at this.

Why hadn’t she noticed the team sitting on her for three days or more?

Of course, he had only known about it because an asset of his had swung by and spotted the detail, passed Castle the info. You already got someone on the girl; team of three. Beat me to it. Castle hadn’t asked for details; he’d just come straight home. 

After Deleware, it had become clear he needed to keep an eye on her, just check to be sure. More than just the cameras mounted above the exits at her apartment, cameras he could check but which never showed him anything of worth. He had needed eyes on her from time to time just to give himself peace of mind.

But on the balance, he could never let on what she meant to him. To the contacts he sent (who weren’t his friends, who didn’t know her) she was only a source he was vetting; she was a loose end he had to tie up or a future meet. He used only a handful of people, a different resource, a new chip called in. His most reliable reporter was a homeless man who traveled the neighborhood; Becket had even referred to him once or twice before. It was how he’d known to ask the man to check on her. 

He never put her at risk. He was very careful. Deleware had surprised him; Deleware had been the slumbering viper in their midst, and if Beckett hadn’t been so capable, if Castle hadn’t already been training her for this, he didn’t like to think how that might have ended.

They still trained. But now Beckett had an edge to her workouts that was almost grim. His own methods had become more strict and formal, his instruction serious; he found himself repeating things his father had said in their own sessions. And it was disheartening, seeing her hardened by his own hand, hearing her repeat back lessons he’d heard first from his father’s mouth.

Fucking hell, Castle would not do that to someone else. He had fantasized, once, after a strange dream missing her, what it might be like to have kids with Beckett, but honestly it had been more like a nightmare. She’d be a terrible mom, which maybe sounded harsh, but he would be an even worse father - with only his own father for a role model. 

He had to admit their relationship had progressed to something a whole lot more necessary and intense than he’d ever believed possible. Two years ago when they’d first met, he had been struck by her. He hadn’t been in love, exactly. Not then. No, that had been a kind of puppy love, a pathetic adoration for a woman who had been color in his black and white world. Hamburgers when he’d been on a strict nutritional program, lacy underwear he’d picked out for her, cupcakes to dodge a thunderstorm, emotions that bewildered his usually rigid lines.

What this was - now - this was real. He was made into a better man - for her, and for himself - every day (more like every season, every time he passed through again, it changed him, altered him, made him a better person to have spent that time with her). He had hoped, for a while now, that his moments with her had been good for her too.

But ever since Deleware, he couldn’t be sure.

He couldn’t be sure he was good for her at all. Not just the danger he brought into her life with men like Deleware (and his father by extension), but the ways she reacted against him, the ways she tried to prove she wasn’t affected by his world, the chances she took because of him, the ways she denied herself, those extremes.

She had said it. Essentially, she was alone. He was never here for her when she truly needed him. When her father was at his worst, where was Castle? So what if he’d paid the bartender at Dire Straits to help Beckett get Jim to the taxi every time? What the fuck kind of good did that do her?

Damn. He had gone round and round on this for a year or more and he never came to any better conclusions. He did what he could and he invented new ways to go behind her back to help her, but what it came down to was simply one thing: Castle wasn’t a stick around kind of guy. He wasn’t steady. He wasn’t permanent. He couldn’t be relied on for the day in and day out.

Not when she was here and he was everywhere else.

But he wanted her with him.

That was the thing that had hooked in his guts and kept tugging on him, tearing up his insides. He wanted her with him. He wanted her, period, but the solution to all of this was for Kate Beckett to become a spy.

Construction van. She’d been right.

Castle turned at the block and kept moving, his head down, shoulders up, eyes scanning the sidewalk and checking his six in the windows as he passed. 

They were doomed, really. Had been from the beginning.

Kate would never leave this city while her mother’s murder went unsolved. 

He swung back around and there she was, arms crossed, hair a mess of curls where it had begun to dry naturally. Her face was lit up by the sun and she had a beauty mark under one eye that she usually hid with make-up. 

She was beautiful.

His heart hurt.

He was going to solve her mother’s case. That’s all there was to it. No matter the connection to his father’s program, he was going to find the son of a bitch who had taken her mother from her.

\-----


End file.
